From the commencement of the meteorological researches on Ben Nevis, a double set of observations have been carried on—one set on the top of the Ben, and the other at a station at Fort William near the level of the sea. It is not so much from the observations made on the top considered by themselves, as to their relations to those made at the base, that we may hope to arrive at a better knowledge of the atmosphere, and particularly at a better understanding of the principles of weather forecasting. Accordingly, both stations were from the first fitted up with the best instruments.

The Atmometer is merely a hollow ball of unglazed clay, to which a glass tube is luted. The whole is filled with boiled water and inverted so that the open end of the tube stands in a dish of mercury. The water evaporates from the outer surface of the clay (at a rate depending partly on the temperature, partly on the dryness of the air) and in consequence the mercury arises in the tube. In recent experiments this rise of mercury has been carried to nearly 25 inches during dry weather.

Much knowledge has already been gained regarding the nature of light and sound, and much is known as to the functions of both the eye and the ear. Little, however, has been learnt concerning the production of smell and taste, which is not the intellectual property of every educated man. The views of Hobbes and Hartley have been during late years rendered more acceptable by the remarkable discovery that the end-organs of special senses are all built up on the same plan. Developed as they are on the same lines from simpler, practically identical, ectodermic cells, we are forced with Herbert Spencer to look for similarities in the agencies which develop them. In the case of sight and hearing, it is already known that the quality of the sensation produced depends upon the nature—rapidity, complexity—of the vibrating stimulus. The particles of a liquid, as well as particles dissolved in water, are in constant and characteristic vibration. It has been my endeavour to discover whether in the case of taste also it will not be possible to connect the quality of the sensation with the nature or character of the vibration of the sapid particle.

From the synthetic outline of the history of biology contained in a previous paper, the practical corollary was deduced, that it was now legitimate, if not indeed urgent, for the biologist to reverse the usual order of investigation, and instead of merely adding inductively to the categories (therein enumerated) of accumulated fact, boldly to set about interpreting these in terms of their fundamental secret, that of constructive and destructive metabolism—anabolism and katabolism.

The recent extensive therapeutic use of cocain has naturally aroused great interest with regard to its chemical constitution. As is well known, when heated with dilute mineral acids, it takes up two molecules of water, and becomes decomposed into benzoic acid, methyl alcohol, and another alkaloid ecgonin. When cocain, however, is simply heated in watery solution for some hours, a less complete decomposition ensues, the solution depositing on evaporation a crystalline substance, which is benzoylecgonin.

The various forms of apparatus employed for procuring samples of water from beneath the surface are either designed to take up as a sample a mixture of the water in a certain vertical range, or to secure their entire charge at one definite position. The former description of water-bottle has been used almost invariably in deepsea work; the latter is necessary only in shallow water.

My object in this paper is to call attention to a few observations which occurred to me during a recent scientific survey of part of Central Africa, regarding the larger economy of tropical nature. And I wish especially, and with much deference, to attempt to supplement a well-known theory of Mr Darwin's, by bringing forward another claimant to the honour of being, along with the earth-worm, the leading organic agricultural and geological agent in nature.

A very considerable number of earthworms have been referred to the genus Lumbricus, and its immediate allies Dendrobœna, Allolobophora, &c, which have in reality no marked affinities with any of these genera. Such are, for example, Lumbricus corethrurus of Fritz Müller, which Perrier has shown to belong to a distinct generic type described by him under the name of Urochœta, and Lumbricus microchœta of Rapp, which is also the type of a new genus, widely differing from Lumbricus proper. On the other hand, a very large number of species have been referred to the latter genus, concerning which there is little or no knowledge, so that it is impossible to speak with any certainty as to their exact systematic position.

I will commence my paper with a brief description of the typical characters of a reef in this region, referring particularly to the distribution of the corals. There would appear to be a large number of new specific forms among the reef-corals of these islands, whether hydroid or actinoid. Out of nearly seventy species that I sent to the British Museum, almost a quarter are new or undescribed; and there is every probability that similar success will fall to the lot of other collectors in these seas. There is yet much to be learned of the fauna of the deeper parts of the reef-coral zone; and patient dredging will doubtless yield fruitful results. Here, not improbably, will be found the corals of deep-sea genera and the Rhynconella that I discovered in an upraised barrier-reef in the Shortland Islands. Having only a small canoe, I was not able to dredge in these depths; but I may remark, as a good omen for others, that, when sounding off a reef on one occasion, I brought up from a depth of 14 fathoms a new and very distinct species of Distichopora (D. ochracea), which is described and figured by Mr J. J. Quelch in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for July 1885.

The majority of recent investigations have concluded that the thickening of the rim of the blastoderm, and the new layer which is derived from it, is brought about by a true invagination of the segmented blastoderm. On the other hand, Klein and Kupffer hold that the newly formed layer is not derived from the segmented blastoderm (archiblast), but is mainly produced from an unsegmented portion of the blastoderm (parablast), which is intermediate in position between the archiblast and the yolk.

The shells of certain molluscs which are obtainable on the seashore between tides are seen to be more or less coloured green. I have noticed a fine rich colour on the operculum of a Turbo from the Pacific Ocean, which had been killed and the shell preserved dry. The shell has a high polish, the colour is the rich green of an ivy leaf, and the pigment is contained in the shell material. When the mollusc dies, and the shell is left exposed to air, light, and water, the green becomes a brownish-yellow colour. Some specimens of spirit, which had been poured off shells and fragments of coral obtained by dredging in deep waters, were examined by me for Mr J. T. Buchanan.

The second, only, of two short papers which I communicated to the Society a month ago, on points connected with the Kinetic Theory of gases, took account of the greater probability of collision between two particles as their relative speed is larger. I propose now to calculate the effect of this consideration on the results of my first paper.

In a memoir published in the Chemical News, vol. xlviii. Page 37, and the Journal of the Chemical Society, 1884, page 94, I gave some account of a peculiar excretory product found in the Sepia's “liver.”The product was found to be albumin in pseudo-crystalline aggregations when examined under the microscope. These bodies are not of a constant occurrence in this organ of the Sepia. Since the publication of the above paper, which is a year and a half ago, I have made a thorough examination of this organ in Sepia, which substaniate and extend the observations of Krukenberg, Fredericq, and Jousset de Bellesme.

The forms of the uniaxial systems may be regarded as derived from forms, or parts of forms or combinations, of the regular system by uniform expansion or contraction in a direction parallel to the axis of the uniaxial system, i.e., normal to a face of the cube for the tetragonal, and normal to a face of the octahedron for the hexagonal system. Faces, therefore, which are, in the regular form or combination, at right angles to or parallel to such axis, retain their relative angular position unchanged in the uniaxial form or combination, and can be represented by means of indices referring to the rectangular axes of the regular system, whatever be the amount of the deformation (expansion or contraction). These faces are prism faces, parallel to the axis, and basal faces at right angles to it. All other faces have their angular position affected by the deformation.